Interview Transcript

Hello, my name is Anders Ohlsson. I'm with Borland Developer Relations. With me today, I have Simon Thornhill, Vice President and General Manager of the RAD Products Group. Welcome, Simon.

Simon

Hello.

Anders

Simon, Delphi 6 is the most eagerly anticipated release of Delphi since Delphi 1. Tell us, what is all the excitement about?

Simon

Well, Delphi has always been about simplifying complex technologies and emerging technologies. We saw with Delphi 1 how it really simplified Windows application development and database application development, moving them into client/server and multi-tier. What you're really seeing now with Delphi 6 is that it's going to simplify the next generation of web application development.

There is a lot of talk in the industry at the moment and a lot of excitement relative to web services. Delphi, with Delphi 6, has really simplified those [services], so the developer can concentrate on the business solution and have the complexities of web services handled for them through the application development environment. There is a big competitive advantage for businesses to grow their business using web services to provide P2P [peer-to-peer] solutions. Delphi 6 is going to simplify that work and really take out a lot of the risk for providing those solutions.

Delphi 6 is the first rapid application development environment for web services. This means people new to Delphi, such as Visual Basic customers, can come over and use Delphi to create new, next generation web applications, particularly web services. They'll be able to create a new type of application, which is the aggregation of existing web services, to meet new business requirements and provide new business solutions.

Delphi 6 allows existing visual developers on the Windows platform to take their experiences, their expertise, their knowledge (and in the case of existing Delphi code, they can take the code), and using Delphi 6, create applications [that] can be single-sourced and created for the Windows environment. [These applications] can be taken over, using Kylix, to the Linux environment. This allows a Delphi 6 developer to single-source an application, a solution, both for the Windows environment and for the Linux environment.

Anders

How does Delphi 6 fit in with Borland's other products and technologies?

Simon

Borland is focused on the e-business implementation platform. This is develop, deploy, and manage. With Delphi 6, of course, we're handling the develop piece. This means we'll handle the IT infrastructure and the complex technologies, so that you can then concentrate on your business solution. A typical scenario of all the pieces working together could be Delphi creating a Corba application, that's also talking to a Borland (J2EE application server) application, that may be using InterBase as the back-end database, and using Delphi to create web clients and rich clients for the application. So, really, Delphi is heavily involved in the Borland e-business implementation platform on the development piece.

Anders

Simon, we've talked a lot about Delphi 6. What's the future?

Simon

There are over 1 million Delphi developers in the world. Delphi 5 has seen growth over previous versions of Delphi. It's very important, as we look into the future, that the Delphi development team continue to evaluate emerging technologies, so they can simplify those for our customers and bring them into new releases of Delphi. Specifically, what the future holds for the Delphi 6 feature set is that you will be seeing that move over into Kylix for the Linux platform, and you will be seeing similar technologies appearing in C++ Builder in the near future.

Anders

Sounds like a very exciting future! Thanks for coming, Simon.

Simon

Thank you, Anders.

Anders

Thanks for watching. We'll be doing interviews with Michael Swindell, the Director of the RAD Products Group. We'll do interviews with Chuck Jazdzewski, the Delphi Chief Architect. We'll do interviews with all the other engineers and about all the other technologies in Delphi 6. Thanks for watching again.

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